The Kid's User Guide to a Human Life: An Open Heart

By Rebecca Brenner and Brooke Kemmerer

The author of The Kid’s User Guide to a Human Life: Book One: An Open Mind returns with mindfulness techniques for dealing with emotions.
 
The second book in the Kid’s User Guide to a Human Life series teaches kids (and inner kids) about mindfulness techniques for working with emotions. It looks closely at how feelings arise and how to navigate the sometimes tumultuous river of emotions, and it shares simple, yet very effective, ways to sort through them. Through different techniques, kids will be able to learn more about being mindful and figuring out how they feel to help lead them towards better emotional well-being and health.
 
The Kid’s User Guide to a Human Life series helps the reader discover the answer to the question “Who am I really?” by explaining all the ways in which we change and shift from one role in our life to the next, and how even our body doesn’t stay the same for long. It is great for parents, teachers, and counselors who are interested in learning more about mindfulness for kids and how to discuss and teach the important points and ideas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781614489245

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

—Henry David Thoreau

On our last adventure in The Kid’s User Guide to a Human Life, Book One: An Open Mind, you began the journey of looking deeply into your own self. You started by exploring the structure of your brain, your Inner Navigator. You saw how your brain is hardwired by billions of neurons and the pathways they create throughout your brain called neuron pathways. Even though all brains have essentially the same parts, how yours is wired is unique to you!

You looked at how your brain takes in information from all around you to inform the neurons on which pathways to create. You learned how your family interactions and dynamics, the community you live in, your friendships, your education, the music you listen to, the books you read and the television shows you watch all create pathways in your brain. It was quite an awesome discovery to learn that all the information you take in from the world around you and how you process it creates your neuron pathways, which in many ways make you You!

You saw how this You comes alive through what you are saying to yourself all day—your own Chattering Mind. You looked deeply into how your Chattering Mind is a noisy place—repetitive, habitual and many times negative. You noticed how the Chattering Mind, when left unchecked, moves you into an automatic and unconscious way of being.

You glimpsed how this automatic way of being keeps your chatter focused on a small set of experiences, looping continuously and filtering everything you do through this repetitive loop. You began to see how this limits the natural openness of your true adventurous self. And how this in turn limits your experience of the magic of your life unfolding moment by moment.